"evropuli qartia saqarTvelo "European Charter for Regional or ...

lated variants than German dialects (systemic analysis of Georgian
idioms see below).
In our view, the issue of correlation between a language and a dialect
is rather solved by considering the linguistic-ethnic self-perception
(self-identification) of a civilized society and a literary tradition 282
.
1.1.2. Several Aspects of History of the Kartvelian Idioms
Methods of reconstructing proto-languages on the basis of comparative
study of the extant language data are well processed; namely,
the initial language model of the related language entities will be reconstructed
on an internal reconstruction, comparative reconstruction and
lexical-semantic reconstruction basis.
Almost all researchers in the field of Kartvelian linguistics believe
that the Georgian written language is mostly relevant to the initial
common Kartvelian model of the Kartvelian language-dialects. The
large part of the specialists mostly reconstructs the same consonants in
common Kartvelian that are available in the archaic written Georgian:
Plosives: b, p, p’; d, t, ţ; ĵ, c, ċ; j, č, ĉ ; g, k, ķ; ĥ, q;
Fricatives: z, s; ž, š; ğ, ħ; h;
sonorants: m, n, r, l.
Morphological, syntactic and semantic structures of proto-Kartvelian
are also substantially similar to the archaic literary Georgian (see in detail
below).
Divergence scheme of the Kartvelian dialects is a disputable issue
among the specialists. In our opinion, the most well-founded view was
formulated by Acad. Arnold Chikobava. According to him, as a result
of minor alterations, the Zan-Svan dialect group shifted from the common
Kartvelian later dividing into the Zan and Svan language entities.
Schematically it could be presented as follows:
282 For discussion see T. Putkaradze, 2005, pp. 42-70.
233